Doctrine

Can God Suffer?

by Prof. Gerald Bray

Perhaps no traditional Christian doctrine has taken a greater bashing
from modern theologians than the assertion that God is "impassible" by
nature--that is, that he cannot experience suffering. Such a doctrine
sounds to many people today as if God does not care about human life.
And in the wake of the terrible persecutions of our time, particularly
the Holocaust, the impassibility of God is frequently blamed for the
church's failure to make an adequate response. Taking their cue from
men like Jürgen Moltmann, who lived through the destruction of European
Jewry and who had some personal experience of that catastrophe, many
theologians have looked for a "God after Auschwitz." They want
a God who is near to us, who understands our suffering, and who participates
in it with us. Only by such participation, it is argued, can redemption
occur, because only then has God truly committed himself to the reality
which he himself created.

In such a context, the traditional doctrine has been rejected on the
grounds that it is of pagan Greek origin, and that it has little to do
with the compassionate God of the Bible. These theologians charge that
for centuries, the Christian church has been in thrall to an alien philosophy,
from which it must now liberate itself. Those attacking the doctrine
are certainly not all theological liberals; many conservatives too are
uneasy with it. Even if they are reluctant to abandon this ancient teaching,
few modern conservatives actively defend it. Such widespread agreement
is impressive and must command respect, but the tradition cannot be set
aside merely by the consensus of a single generation, despite the aftermath
of exceptionally brutal times. Before we pass judgment on impassibility,
we must look carefully at what it is, and try to decide whether, and
to what extent, modern criticisms of it are justified.

The Early History of Impassibility

First of all, there can be no doubt that the concept of impassibility
owes its origin to pre-Christian Greek philosophy, and to that extent
may be regarded as "alien" to the Scriptures. Early Christian
apologists and theologians were confronted with a widespread belief that
the perfect being was by definition apathes, without suffering. They
also had to confront the corollary assertion that human happiness consisted
in achieving (as far as possible) a state of apatheia, or tranquillity.
This supposedly enables the true philosopher to contemplate the essence
of reality and enjoy it without distraction. Such a state could not be
achieved without a high degree of self-denial, refusing to let pain and
suffering affect one's thinking. "Stoicism" was highly valued
in antiquity, where there were numerous tales of men who met their deaths
without flinching, because their minds were fixed on higher things.

The ancient concept of suffering was primarily one of physical pain,
inflicted by an external force which served to weaken its victim, culminating
in death. Whether the source of the pain was a blow from an enemy's weapon,
or a disease gnawing at one's entrails, the essential point remained
the same: Pain of this kind was unavoidable in human life. The proper
stoic response was to overcome it by refusing to accept its power over
the mind, even if there was not much one could do about the body. Besides,
the ancients considered the material body of little importance, essentially
evil and perishable.

How did Christians respond? No Christian could deny the reality of Christ's
extreme suffering on the cross, its intensity often subsuming his death.
The Nicene Creed, for example, says merely that Christ "suffered
and was buried," leaving the reader to infer that death occurred,
but not actually saying so. Martyrdom immediately brought this home to
ordinary believers: to be a Christian was to take up one's cross and
follow Jesus, even to the point of death. The early Christian apologists
portrayed Christians as soldiers preparing for battle. They slighted
the philosophers' concept of transcendent tranquillity. Some Christians
like Tertullian (c. A.D. 200) strongly derided the philosophers' impractical
outlook on life.

Therefore the notion of divine impassibility was not immediately compatible
with early Christian teaching or experience. It is wrong then to say
that it entered the language of Christian theology as a holdover from
some pagan philosophical form. When the church did address the issue,
however, it affirmed that God cannot suffer in his divine nature. The
classical statement of this view is found in Cyril of Alexandria's second
letter to Nestorius, which was written about A.D. 429. His view was confirmed
both at the first council of Ephesus (431) and at the council of Chalcedon
(451). He writes:

In a similar way we say that he [Christ] suffered and rose again, not
that the Word of God suffered blows or piercing with nails or any other
wounds in his own nature (for the divine, being without a body, is incapable
of suffering); but because the body which became his own suffered these
things, he is said to have suffered them for us. For he was without suffering
(apathes), while his body suffered. Something similar is true of his
dying. For by nature the Word of God is of itself immortal and incorruptible
and life and life-giving, but since on the other hand, his own body,
by God's grace, as the apostle says (Heb. 2:9) tasted death for all,
the Word is said to have suffered death for us, not as if he himself
had experienced death as far as his own nature was concerned (it would
be sheer lunacy to say or to think that), but because as I have just
said, his flesh tasted death. So too, when his flesh was raised to life,
we refer to this again as his resurrection, not as though he had fallen
into corruption--God forbid--but because his body had been raised again.

In this passage we can see immediately that Cyril was operating with
the contemporary Greek assumptions regarding suffering. Suffering applies
to the body, and because God does not have a body, he cannot suffer.
But like all his fellow Christians, Cyril did not go on (as would most
pagan philosophers) to dismiss the body. On the contrary, he explains
that the purpose of the incarnation of the Word was to make divine suffering
possible. God was given (or took) a human body, in order to bring about
the resurrection from the dead, which is the ultimate goal of the Christian
life. Cyril's vision shows God coming as close to suffering as he possibly
can, by acquiring a body to experience it. There can be no greater involvement
on God's part in human suffering than this, Cyril states. He holds up
the incarnation as the way in which the problem of God's natural impassibility
was overcome.

The Modern Reworking of "Suffering"

The modern question is rather different from the one faced by Cyril.
First of all, theologians today want to affirm that God can suffer (in
some sense at least) in his divine nature, and to claim that the whole
concept of "suffering" needs to be rethought. Many would agree
that if the ancient notion of suffering is accepted, then of course,
God must be impassible. Not only does he not have a body, but his sovereignty
makes it inconceivable that he could ever be subjected to an external
force which is more powerful than he is. The real difficulty with the
traditional doctrine is therefore not that it is wrong in its own terms
(it is not), but that our understanding of what suffering is has changed
in such a way that the older assertion no longer makes sense. This solution
has the advantage of exculpating the ancient fathers, while at the same
time demonstrating why their teaching has to be recast (if not entirely
rejected) today.

The main point of difference seems to be that suffering is regarded
today as a psychological, emotional, and even spiritual phenomenon, as
much as a physical one. The claim is made that such distinctions are
artificial and untenable, and that if it is true that human beings can
have a relationship with God which is both just and caring, then God
must be capable of entering into our pain. The modern theologians are
not talking here about brute physical force, but about compassion and "empathy," which
the ancients supposedly ignored. That is not strictly true of course--ancient
Christian writers categorized such notions under "love," rather
than "suffering." Once that shift of perception is made, it
is quite clear that the fathers of the church believed in God's compassion
just as much as any modern theologian.

Perhaps the best way to try to understand the nature of this problem
is to take a familiar modern analogy--that of doctor and patient. Someone
lying in a hospital bed does not want to be solely treated by a machine,
which functions regardless of the pain it might inflict. Rather, the
patient wants to be treated by someone who understands what he or she
is going through, and who will sensitively adjust his approach. For this,
a human being is essential, and any good doctor knows that his or her
bedside manner is at least as important as any medicine. But having said
that, what patient wants the doctor to climb into the bed next to him
or her and start making groaning noises, as if to indicate that the doctor,
too, is experiencing the same pain? This is not the kind of "empathy" desired,
because the fundamental reason the patient wants the doctor is not to
receive sympathy from him or her; the patient can get that just as easily
from any medically unskilled visitor. What the patient wants is to be
cured. Understanding pain is all very well, but overcoming it is what
all sufferers really want. God is impassible, not because he is uncaring
(he is in fact far more compassionate than any human being ever could
be), but because he is strong to save. Unlike human doctors, who are
available only at certain times and who are occasionally "off sick" themselves,
God is always ready and able to help. The impassibility of his nature
is, therefore, a guarantee that he will always be there.

The modern reaction to impassibility may be understandable in its context,
but it is essentially misguided. Accusations that the fathers of the
church were influenced by their pagan philosophical background do not
stand up to serious examination (quite the reverse, in fact). More important
still, the doctrine is not a barrier to understanding God's compassion,
but is in fact the assertion that his compassion is always fully available
and functioning. Impassibility may not be something that we need to think
about very often (when things are going well, we usually take them for
granted), but it is vitally important nevertheless. As Christians we
need to appreciate where divine impassibility fits into the overall picture
of God's saving work.